Esoteric Brezhnevism

  "Ukrainian" parliamentarian Zhan Beleniuk meets with "Ukrainian" figurehead Volodymyr Zelensky With NATO’s proxy war against Russia ongoing in Ukraine, no consensus prevails as to whether Ukraine, or parts of Ukraine, rightfully constitute an independent land and nation, part of “the West”, or merely politically disconnected outliers of Greater Russia. In his eccentric and awkwardly titled 2016 book Corruption in Ukraine: Rulers’ Mentality and the Destiny of the Nation, Geophilosophy of Ukraine , Ukrainian academic Oleg Bazaluk approaches Ukraine’s uniquely troubled existence from the perspective of an interdisciplinary study of the country’s geophilosophy, combining analysis of interrelated geographic, historical, geopolitical, sociological, and psychological considerations.   Ukraine’s tragedy, in Bazaluk’s judgment, derives from its situation as a limitrophe state between two rival civilizations, that of Western Europe and that of Russia, which is “reasonably...

Ayatollah Khomeini, leader of the 1979 Islamic revolution that overthrew the Shah of Iran and removed an important US ally from the geopolitical chessboard, served as a natural foil for the irreverent spirit of Anglo-American pop culture and MTV in its inaugural decade. Killing Joke’s 1984 music video for “ Eighties ” simulates the Iranian firebrand’s assassination, and the grotesquely humorous 1986 Genesis video for “ Land of Confusion ” juxtaposes Khomeini with Benito Mussolini, implying a totalitarian equivalency. The Ayatollah also served as partial inspiration for Neil Young’s 1989 single “ Rockin’ in the Free World ” with its line “Don’t feel like Satan, but I am to them” [1]. U2 frontman Bono “offered shelter and support to [Salman] Rushdie while he was under a fatwa issued [by Khomeini] in 1989” following the publication of The Satanic Verses ; and, seeking “to publicly show support for the embattled Rushdie,” Bono “invited him onstage during a Zooropa tour stop in London in 19...

  [Originally published at Aryan Skynet on April 11, 2019] “On Sunday 30 January 1972, what became known as Bloody Sunday, news came from Northern Ireland that the British Army had opened fire on a Republican demonstration, killing 13 people: In the wake of this appalling incident,” Paul McCartney “did something that was for him very rare indeed,” writes Howard Sounes in  Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney . Two days after the incident, he and Wings recorded “ Give Ireland Back to the Irish ”, a song “not only condemning the shootings, which most people lamented, but calling for the British to get out of Ireland, which was more problematic because the Protestant Loyalist population feared they would be murdered by their Catholic neighbors if the British Army withdrew. In writing this song,” Sounes contends, “Paul put himself on the side of the Republican movement and its terrorist group, the IRA, which was engaged in a murderous campaign against the British.” [1] I n...